1. Field of the Invention
The present invention refers to a process for the manufacture of a decorative product formed by a composite material, particularly suited to be used in the field of furnishing and artistic adornment, and to a decorative product obtained through such a process.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the prior art, numerous decorative items are already known having the object of providing special luminous and aesthetic effects in the environment in which they are used and forming partitioning walls, luminous ceilings and the like.
These two-dimensional decorative items, of any shape are given the commercial term panel and this term will be used for them in the following description.
Italian patent application No. 35700B8/8 descibes a panel comprising a combination of: two transparent sheets placed at a reciprocal distance reduced relative to the size of the surface extension of said sheets; spacing and sealing members which bind said sheets and a plurality of coloured glass beads and/or glass chips and/or ground glass and/or granulated glass and/or glass dust), for filling completely or partly the volume between said two sheets.
By special arrangement of shapes and colours, said filling material provides a decorative effect to the panel, and for this reason, in the following description it will be called decorative material.
The above described type of panel, shows some drawbacks when it is used on large surfaces and in all cases in which it is necessary to ensure an adequate degree of safety associated with an aesthetic effect.
In fact, in the case of a square-shaped panel, the sides can not be more than 50 cm, in that the heavy weight of the decorative material contained would cause bending the sheets forming the container. Furthermore, in the case of breakage of one or of both the sheets of the container, a scattering and loss of the decorative material would occur. Moreover, in the case these panels should be used for decorative purposes in doors or external surfaces or walls or ceilings or skylights, it is not possible to guarantee adequate safety characteristics against their breakage.
An object of the present invention is to overcome the drawbacks mentioned above, by providing a panel which has adequate safety characteristics to be usable in a plurality of uses which were not thought of until now in the prior art.
Another object of the present invention is to propose a process for the manufacture of this new type of product.